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Friday, October 4, 2013

Titicut Follies: An Asylum for the Criminally Insane

"They was gonna take my balls out of me... I told the doctor before I come here that I didn't want my balls taken out of me, so they took the cords out instead."

Titicut Follies, a 1967 documentary film by Frederick Weismann, depicts the miserable and inhumane existence of inmates living in Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

It's not easy to watch. It hasn't always been easy to find a copy of the movie to watch, either.

Shortly before screening at the 1967 New York Film Festival, Massachusetts sought a legal injunction banning the release of the documentary. These actions come at a time when there was significant negative press about the institution and the state's handling of people with mental illness.

Despite the filmmaker getting permission from all the people shown in the film as well as the superintendent of the facility (who appears to have used the documentary as a tool to try to get more funding), Massachusetts claimed that the permission was not valid. In the end, the film was screened at the New York Film Festival. However, a year later Massachusetts Superior Court judge Harry Klaus ordered the filmed removed from distribution because of claims that the film violated the patients' privacy and dignity.

Wiseman appealed the superior court decision to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The court allowed for a limited distribution of the film allowing it to be shown only to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers, and students in these and similar fields. Further appeals to the US Supreme Court were refused.

For years hardly anyone saw this film. For years, the men at Bridgewater languished, often naked and in solitary confinement. This institution was one of the myriad examples of people with mental illness being treated like unwanted animals.

Who were the men at this institution? How about the man who painted a horse? One inmate was sent to Bridgewater in 1938 because he painted a horse with stripes to make it look like a zebra. He was a fresh fruit vendor and in order to increase sales and get more attention, he though it might be a good idea paint his horse. He was arrested for public drunkenness at age 29 and died at Bridgewater from old age. He was supposed to serve two years.

News reports at the time suggest that upward of 30 inmates were being held illegally. Many of those prisoners were in Bridgewater because they lacked the skills or financial resources to navigate through the legal system. In one remarkably horrible example, a man named Charles was sentenced to Bridgewater for breaking and entering in 1910. Despite the maximum penalty for this felony being two years, he remained in the prison until at least 1967.

With the ban on distribution and viewing of Titicut Follies, this became the first film in this history of the United States film industry to be banned from general audiences for reasons other than immorality, obscenity, or national security.

In 1987 families of seven inmates who died at the hospital sought legal redress from the hospital and state. As Ronald Reagan was in his final years of his presidency overseeing the end of a very long process in which lead to people with mental illness continuing to suffer in institutions while allegedly shifting treatment into the community (see here, here, and here) one plaintiff was

"restrained for two and a half months and given six psychiatric drugs at vastly unsafe levels--chocked to death because he could not swallow his food... There is a direct connection between the decision not to show that film publicly and my client dying 20 years later, and a whole host of other people dying in between... In the years since Mr. Wiesman made 'Titicut Follies' most of the nations big mental institutions have been closed or cut back by court orders... The film may have also influenced the closing of the institution featured in the film."

In the late 1980s ten legally incompetent and seven competent inmates depicted in the film were found. Of the seven that were considered legally competent, four wanted the film shown. In 1991 Superior Court Judge Andrew Meyer vacated prior orders and allowed the film to be released. The judge required there to be a short statement at the end of the film saying that conditions have improved.

Was the dignity of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or the dignity of humanity at risk here?

May I ask just why I need this help that you are literally forcing on me. Obviously I talk well, I think well, I am well, and you are ruining me. I don't want to say here. I am a prisoner.

8 comments:

I can't watch the film, Jason, the monstrous brutality in places that are supposed to offer asylum is toxic to my wellbeing - which is why, I suppose, most of us can't bear to be aware of this hell. 30 years ago I spent some time in an old fashioned bin as a student nurse where bored and cruel staff casually abused the people in their care. One was an elderly woman who had entered the institution as a child when it was a workhouse. She was used as a lab animal for doctors to learn ECT on. That link between the workhouse and the sanction of torture of inmates shouldn't be missed: we value some people more than others, and those we value least we put into the hands of state-sanctioned thugs and torturers. How close we, as people who are taught to enter the tender, painful places of vulnerable people's psyches, come to either pole is a debate that is very well worth having.

This film we watched in class today and I have to say they treat these people like animals they instagate them and bully them like the patient Jim when the guard asked him "why's your room so filthy,Jim." And the response they get is he yells and they keep pushing Jim and he keeps yelling and they way they strip them naked and put them in their cells that has nothing in them and how they give them just a tin to use as a bathroom. As well as the clothing they get it's the only one they have but they have so many clothes in the back but these people don't care they make fun of the people their and are racist in this film. I had to look away when they feed the guy with the tube and how the "doctor" is holding his cigaret and you can see it's were he has the food for the patient that hasn't eaten in days. Then when the patient dies they don't care if they drop his casket these people that are in charge abuse their power and only like to put on shows were you see the superintendent in their signing and I find him creepy that's all they care about as well as how they had the birthday part and playing games like degrading them and they don't care. I find this movie atrocious because how they treat the people and how they view them as animals instead of human beings.

This film we watched in class today and I have to say they treat these people like animals they instagate them and bully them like the patient Jim when the guard asked him "why's your room so filthy,Jim." And the response they get is he yells and they keep pushing Jim and he keeps yelling and they way they strip them naked and put them in their cells that has nothing in them and how they give them just a tin to use as a bathroom. As well as the clothing they get it's the only one they have but they have so many clothes in the back but these people don't care they make fun of the people their and are racist in this film. I had to look away when they feed the guy with the tube and how the "doctor" is holding his cigaret and you can see it's were he has the food for the patient that hasn't eaten in days. Then when the patient dies they don't care if they drop his casket these people that are in charge abuse their power and only like to put on shows were you see the superintendent in their signing and I find him creepy that's all they care about as well as how they had the birthday part and playing games like degrading them and they don't care. I find this movie atrocious because how they treat the people and how they view them as animals instead of human beings.

We watched this movie in class and it was very eye opening. It's terrible how people can treat each other so harshly, especially the people we consider to have less advantage than us. Especially in a place so close to where I'm living currently. From what I was told everyone in the film spent life there, terrible to think they were stuck for life in that hell.

After viewing this film I cannot help but to laugh. I thought that this world was messed up now. To see how some of these people were treated was disgusting. I understand that there needs to be rules and consequences for those who don't follow those rules; however being put in a Asylum doesn't mean you get treated like garbage. I guess this is just another one of those cases where there needs to be a limit on things. Some of these people in this hospital I feel should be punished way more. The man who sexually abused his daughter should have been given at least 10 years in prison and forever banned to see his daughter ever again. There is a chance that little girl will never be alright. In a case where the man who had the post war syndrome you can't really say much. The guy fought for our country and because of his good deed, he had to witness friends and fellow troops die for our country. I can't imagine what that does to the human mind. Watching this film only makes me think about people that I know very well that are dealing with all different types of stress and depression and honestly I can say it worries me that I possibly could know somebody that can get as bad as some of the people in the film.

I for one am completely baffled by the treatment of the patients in that facility. They were completely stripped down to nothing both physically and mentally and were patronized. This is no way to treat a person especially when they are not able to defend themselves. The cruelty from the staff in this institution was unbelievably uncalled for and I'm glad that changes were made to this place.

Watching this video made me uncomfortable, mad, sad, the way thy treated the patients was unacceptable. The treated them as if they weren't human, they didn't take them serious, they didn't care about the care they were suppose to be giving to these people. Yes the patients here are just as human as you and I are. The treatment was terrible, we treat farm animals better, they at least have hay on the ground in the stalls, these patients had nothing but a bucket in their stalls, can't even call them rooms. Prison cells are better than what these people had. a huge part of the problem was lack of funding, and a lack of people who cared. It is really sad to see that the only time the "doctors" and "nurses" treated them human like was when they had talent shoes, they cared more about the fundraiser than anything else. They took these people and just made them out to be nothing, treated them horribly. I don't get how this was acceptable.

About Me

I am a licensed psychologist in private practice on Harvard Square in Cambridge. I work with adolescents and adults both individually and in groups. On a more personal note, I have an avid interest in stories, including those told through literature movies, and the spoken word; and through the metaphors of music, art, photography, and dance. I try to balance the seriousness of psychotherapy with a gentle and irreverent sense of humor.